Welcome to the refreshed St. Louis Cardinals roster matrix published to celebrate the start of the regular season for the major league club and the four full-season affiliates.

The initial versions of those four minor league rosters, Memphis, Springfield, Palm Beach and Quad Cities, are complete. Also included are injured and suspended players as well as those granted personal leave.

All of the invitees to Extended Spring Training camp are included together, a group that currently sits at 78 players with five more scheduled to arrive next month. The three US-based short-season rosters, for Batavia, Johnson City and the Gulf Coast League Cardinals, are left blank for the time being.

Come June, those clubs will be populated from the EST standouts as well as 2009 draftees and free agent signings. I will keep this roster matrix updated between now and then and then republish another fresh version once the short-season rosters are announced.

Most of the remainder of the EST players will return to the Dominican and Venezuelan Summer Leagues. The additional 62 players on the DSL and VSL rosters not invited to the US are listed below in their most recent league assignments.

All told, the organization currently has 282 players under contract, from St. Louis down through the Venezuelan Summer League Cardinals.

Like everything here at The Cardinal Nation, the matrix is provided at no charge. That doesn’t mean it didn’t take a lot of work to create and maintain. Please be respectful and link back here if you want to reference the matrix rather than copying it elsewhere.

Remember, this Roster Matrix can always be accessed in several ways. You can enter the term “roster matrix” in the blue search box in the upper right of the site or access this information through the top red menu bar under “Players/Staff” > “Depth Charts/Roster Matrix”.

Update 5/8: IF Mike Folli from Spr to Mem. OF Brian Buck released from QC, replaced by Frederick Parejo from EST. LHP George Brown sent from QC to EST, replaced by RHP Josh Wilson. RHP Marco Gonzalez activated by Spr with LHP Kristhiam Linares onto Spr DL. QC moves Andres Rosales and Miguel Tapia to bullpen. New total 280.

Update 5/9: OF Alexander Castellano to VSL from DSL. C Jesus Montero to DSL from VSL. RHPs David Brito and Carlos Noguera released from EST. New total 278.

Players with injuries that led to a stint on the disabled list are noted with (i). The number in parentheses after each club’s name is the quantity of players assigned there. (ti) means the player is on the temporary inactive list. “susp” denotes players suspended.

The names of those on the 40-man roster are listed in BOLD.

After some names, you will see a number in parentheses. That denotes my personal ranking of the player in the annual Top 40 Cardinals Prospects voting at Scout.com. (At The Birdhouse, my individual scores as shown here were weighted one-fourth in determining the final Scout.com ranking.)

Paired members of the tandem starting rotations at Palm Beach and Quad Cities are denoted by “Tn”. Pairs are assigned “n” values 1 through 4 or 5 based on their initial assignment sequence.

When assigning positions, I put players in just one column. My attempt was to acknowledge where they are expected to play during the majority of the season.

To delineate the left-handed starters and relievers, I adopted the practice of placing the lefties at the end of the starters and relievers lists, designated by the letter (L).

Don’t read anything into the order of the names within any column, other than the LHPs at the end. They are generally presented alphabetically. The order has no correlation to playing time, duration on the roster or anything else.

This isn’t the final source on the spelling of players’ names. I have tried to remain consistent with what we use at Scout.com and what is designated at MiLB.com. Especially with the academy players, the information from the Cardinals themselves can even include mistakes.

Don’t forget the wealth of (free) information about each player that we maintain in the Scout.com player data base. It is too unwieldy to maintain every link to almost 300 player profiles directly from the matrix, but do keep using the Scout profiles as the source for additional information on individual players.

I will always designate the most current date when the matrix was last updated, but I am not necessarily planning to maintain a log of every transaction that occurs across the system all year, though I will keep the matrix current.

The good news is that I don’t have to document all the moves.UConnCard already does that over on the Scout.com message board. My goal will be to stay in sync with that list of moves visually. So remember the link to the transaction log, especially if/when detailed questions come up.